Somewhere in the Hagia Sophia, directly under the bombsights of the six-winged angels soaring across the east pendentives, lives a cat. I saw him when I visited this past April Fools’ Day. Unimpressed equally by the mosaics and the Arabic calligraphy spelling out God’s names on roundels, he looked interested only in napping. For this, [Read More...]

Here’s a sampling of Facebook comments on Pope Francis’ new ferula: “Okay, I think I know what it looks like: Remember those old magnetic things where there were contained iron shavings, and there was a picture of a guy’s face and you used a magnet pen to move the shavings onto the guy’s face to [Read More...]

James Thurber claimed that he first gained a sense of the surreal from hearing the cliches of his neighbors and family in Columbus, Ohio. In the world of his childish mind, men left town under actual clouds, and women existed who were literally all ears. Hearing about Mrs. Huston, who was all cut up when [Read More...]